Trump’s recent comments about President Obama waging a war on Christianity don’t hurt him much with the GOP base. 69% agree with the sentiment that the President has waged a war on Christianity, with only 17% disagreeing.
Trump’s probably not hurting himself too much with his negativity toward Muslims either- only 49% of Republicans think the religion of Islam should even be legal in the United States with 30% saying it shouldn’t be and 21% not sure. Among Trump voters there is almost even division with 38% thinking Islam should be allowed and 36% that it should not.
In fact they pretty much like everything about him except his rudeness about Fiorina’s looks and insults toward Columba Bush. Other than that, though it’s all good. This is not surprising to anyone who has been watching the right wing for more than five minutes. They are not what one would call proponents of pluralism.
But here’s something I don’t understand. The beltway has suddenly remembered that Donald Trump is a birther and is all upset that he failed to correct that throwback questioner about the President’s faith. I’ve seen pundit after pundit declare that such sentiments are out of bounds. And others seem to have just awakened to the fact that right wingers don’t care for Muslims, which means they have been deeper in the bubble than even I realized. And they are shocked, I tell you, shocked that Donald Trump would be seen as someone who would endorse such ugly sentiments.
That’s right, the man who announced his presidential campaign by declaring that most undocumented immigrants are rapists is supposed to be someone who repudiates xenophobic language and they are surprised that the man who ridiculously insisted the president was not born in the US and succeeded in getting him to release his long form birth certificate to prove him wrong is supported by a bunch of Muslim-hating bigots.
You knew I would have to write about Scott Walker one last time, right? I have to say I’ll miss him. Re-tweeting his epically banal tweets with Chauncey Gardner quotes was some of the best fun I’ve had in a long time. (I know, I need to get a life…)
About a year and a half ago, I wrote a piece here about a phenomenon I called The Great Whitebread Hope, which is an ongoing Republican establishment fantasy of electing an upper-Midwestern “reformer” in the LaFollete tradition who can bring together all the disparate factions of the party and offer up an image of respectable, mature, pragmatic leadership (and incidentally pick up some badly needed electoral votes from somewhere).
In 2008, it was former Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, whom beltway political mavens had built up for years as an exciting Republican reformer with big “new ideas” (like welfare reform and school vouchers). In the wake of the Bush debacle, he was especially attractive as an “outsider” who could make the American people forget what they’d just endured. Unfortunately, like Walker, on the stump Thompson was frighteningly unprepared, even making embarrassing gaffes about Jews and Israel, and he dropped out in August of 2007. Undeterred by this embarrassment, the establishment once again anointed a Midwestern Governor as the GOP’s salvation for exactly the same reasons in 2014, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who also flamed out before any votes were cast.
This year it was Scott Walker, who “suspended” his campaign yesterday after having been in precipitous free fall from front-runner to last place and facing the prospect of being booted from the main debate stage and forced to spar with Lindsey Graham at the kids’ table next time out.
If you don’t count Gerald Ford, who backed into the presidency by being appointed vice president and succeeding Nixon when he resigned, the GOP has not nominated a presidential candidate from the Midwest since Alf Landon back in 1936. (And it wasn’t exactly a resounding victory — he only got two electoral votes.) But while it’s true that the modern electoral map is very daunting for the GOP, they seem peculiarly fixated on this region. Walker took the early lead in the Midwestern savior race, but for months people were also talking up Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as similarly excellent choices to lead the GOP out of the wilderness. Back in 2014, as they all made pilgrimages to the Republican Governor’s Association, Politico described them this way:
“[They are] Rust Belt success stories who can revive the party’s Reagan Democrat coalition and speak to the middle class in a way Mitt Romney could not. And Republicans looking to shed the image as the party of the 1 percent say a Midwestern state executive who’s created jobs and balanced budgets might be just what the GOP needs.”
The fact that they seemed to be able to transcend the party’s, shall we say, cruder side was also a big selling point. As Walker put it during his apparently impressive appearance:
“Strong leadership, combined with Midwestern nice, there’s just a certain appeal to that.”
By strong leadership he meant that one should be as crackpot right-wing as one can get away with and not be Michele Bachmann. And Walker was that guy in every way. The New Republic described him this way:
“Scott Walker, the battle-hardened governor of Wisconsin, is the candidate that the factional candidates should fear. Not only does he seem poised to run—he released a book last week—but he possesses the tools and positions necessary to unite the traditional Republican coalition and marginalize its discontents.”
And he certainly seemed nice, so nice in fact that he appeared to be something of a grinning simpleton at times, particularly on social media, where his tweeting of his dinner menus and constant pictures of himself riding on a Harley were ruthlessly mocked. While all the constituencies in the party who were presumed to be his greatest fans gave him plenty of chances, his gaffes and flip-flops made them doubt his sincerity and abilities.
He had been widely assumed to be the Koch brothers’ choice due to their involvement in the union busting and recall campaign in Wisconsin. And they were admittedly very impressed with him until he started making embarrassing mistakes, like saying that Ronald Reagan’s greatest foreign policy achievement was taking on the air traffic controllers union, and flip-flopping on immigration several times, finally landing on the opinion that even legal immigration should be ended. Not ready for prime time doesn’t begin to describe it and the Kochs have known that for a while now.[…]
The good news for Washington’s pundits and establishment Republicans is that there’s still some hope for their Midwestern hero scenario to come true in 2016. There is another one in the race: Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Whether or not he can make the cut is still unknown, but if there’s one thing you can say about him, it’s that he’s anything but dull. Unfortunately, the Republican electorate seems mesmerized by “outsider” amateurs this year so far and Kasich is the embodiment of a lifelong politician who took some time out to cash in — he’s the fourth richest Republican running — and then jump back in to become governor, and then president. He also has a habit of diluting his hardcore conservatism with some pragmatic deal-making from time to time, which is unlikely to be acceptable unless he adopts some Trumpish attitudes about Mexicans and Muslims to cover it.
But whatever happens this time out, for those who believe in the Great Whitebread Hope as the only salvation for a fractured party that needs someone who can convince the country it hasn’t gone completely stark raving mad, there’s every reason to believe that the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.
More at the link…
Good bye Chauncey. You were lots of fun while you lasted. And who knows? Maybe he’ll go back to Wisconsin, lick his wounds and try to be a better person.You never know …
I’ll have a glass of Christian-lite with plenty of ice please
by digby
Ben Carson explains his religious intolerance on Facebook:
The first issue I want to deal with tonight is the stories today about my comments yesterday when I was asked if I would support a hypothetical Muslim candidate for President. I responded “I would not advocate for that” and I went on to say that many parts of Sharia Law are not compatible with the Constitution. I was immediately attacked by some of my Republican peers and nearly every Democrat alive. Know this, I meant exactly what I said. I could never support a candidate for President of the United States that was Muslim and had not renounced the central tenant of Islam: Sharia Law.
Those Republicans that take issue with my position are amazing. Under Islamic Law, homosexuals – men and women alike – must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed.
I know that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs. But until these tenants are fully renounced…I cannot advocate any Muslim candidate for President.
Oh, I agree. But I also demand that Ben Carson and all Christians renounce the Christian fundamentalists like the Quiverfull movement which require hierarchy, authority and strict gender roles for men, women, boys and girls. You see, just as Carson’s campaign manager explained that he has no problem with Islam-lite I have no problem with “Christian-lite”, but I do want all the Christians to renounce this:
See, I don’t agree with that. And that’s just the beginning. Give me minute.
Oh, and Jews too. Start renouncing. There are tons of things some of your adherents believe with which I disagree.
Just don’t do it like this or someone might think this whole renouncing thing is BS.
This, nonsense, by the way, was exactly why the US Constitution specifically stipulates no establishment of religion and no religious tests for office. It really cannot be more clear. The reason is that powerful leaders and religious fanatics alike insisted that people renounce religious beliefs for centuries and a whole lot them ended up with their heads cut off. 500 years of bloody European history taught the Americans that separating politics from government was necessary for civilized nations to live in peace. Ben Carson seems to have skipped that day in history class.
Update:Here is a fascinating Think Progress post about Carson’s religious faith which is much more complex and interesting than I realized. If the conservative evangelicals were truly mostly concerned with theology rather than culture and politics, he probably wouldn’t be quite a popular with them as he is. But other than a few religious professionals, none of that is as important as the Christian Right affect — and I’d guess his comments about Muslims will reverberate among the regular folks very positively.
He is the scariest of them all. He’s the true believer. And it’s correct that he never gets personal which is odd — and may just be the reason he won’t win. Republican voters really prefer it to get personal. In fact, as the Trump phenomenon proves, they don’t really care about much of anything other than pandering dumbly to them, hating on the “enemy” and bragging about themselves.
On the other hand, he might have done himself some good with GOP voters who really are purely ideological but haven’t seriously tuned in yet. He is as ideological as they come.
An explosive story reported by Inside Climate News, an award-winning climate organization, and Frontline, reveals that Exxon knew as early as 1977 that earth’s climate was being seriously disrupted, and would continue to be disrupted, by carbon dioxide emissions, and yet in the 1980s they pivoted to financing an aggressive climate denial effort anyway.
Reporter Neela Banerjee on Exxon and climate change | FRONTLINE
That denial effort continues to this day, financed through the American Petroleum Institute and fronted by actress Brooke Alexander (whom I’ve called “Lying Pantsuit Lady“).
Actress Brooke Alexander, API’s iconic spokesperson. Here she proudly says the U.S. is the number one producer of methane, a greenhouse gas that, when burned, converts to CO2, another greenhouse gas (commercial here).
The report, the first of a series, is described this way by Inside Climate News:
After eight months of investigation, InsideClimate News presents this multi-part history of Exxon’s engagement with the emerging science of climate change. The story spans four decades, and is based on primary sources including internal company files dating back to the late 1970s, interviews with former company employees, and other evidence, much of which is being published here for the first time.
Here’s just a bit from that lead report at ICN (my emphasis):
Exxon: The Road Not Taken
Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels’ Role in Global Warming Decades Ago
Top executives were warned of possible catastrophe from greenhouse effect, then led efforts to block solutions.
By Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation’s headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world’s use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
“In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” Black told Exxon’s Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon’s leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.
A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon’s Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert.
“Some countries would benefit but others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed,” Black said, in the written summary of his 1978 talk.
If you think this adds up to “They knew,” you’d be right. They knew back in 1977, in fact. And they acted like they knew:
Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon’s ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company’s understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.
At the time, they saw a business reason, as well as an “ethical” one, for the proactive and pro-science stance they were taking:
In the early 1980s Exxon researchers often repeated that unbiased science would give it legitimacy in helping shape climate-related laws that would affect its profitability.
But that came to an end:
Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.
As noted, the number of documents the reporters accessed was very large. More on those files:
This untold chapter in Exxon’s history, when one of the world’s largest energy companies worked to understand the damage caused by fossil fuels, stems from an eight-month investigation by InsideClimate News. ICN’s reporters interviewed former Exxon employees, scientists, and federal officials, and consulted hundreds of pages of internal Exxon documents, many of them written between 1977 and 1986, during the heyday of Exxon’s innovative climate research program. ICN combed through thousands of documents from archives including those held at the University of Texas-Austin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The documents record budget requests, research priorities, and debates over findings, and reveal the arc of Exxon’s internal attitudes and work on climate and how much attention the results received.
As I said, this is explosive and detailed. I haven’t touched on the degree to which Exxon financed its own research, including the outfitting of a state-of-the-art supertanker to take air and sea temperature measurements, or the assembly of “a team of climate modelers who investigated fundamental questions about the climate’s sensitivity to the buildup of carbon dioxide in the air.”
I want to send you instead to ICN for the full piece. It’s well written, detailed and easy to grasp. If you’re at all concerned about climate change, this is a must-read, and it will get you set up for the follow-up reports.
For more from the report, watch the brief Frontline video below:
Are Lawsuits a Possibility?
If they knew, they still know. They’ve certainly knowingly misled the public, lied and done harm for financial gain. Do you think this has lawsuit written all over it? After all, this worked:
If they misled the public, have they misled, and perhaps defrauded, their investors as well? I’ve privately heard of at least one well-placed and climate-aware congressperson who wondered if federal RICO prosecutions might be an option, though the (next) President would have to be very aggressive-minded to consider them — or the next Attorney General, in case we return to the pre-Bush era of independent attorneys general.
I’ll have more on this story, including Exxon’s response. I’ve said it’s going to take force. This opportunity, if it’s taken, counts as force.
Several postmortem analyses this morning on the Great Whitebread Hope’s presidential ambitions (emphasis mine):
Short of support and cash, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, saying he had been “called to lead by helping to clear the field,” announced Monday that he was suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Wow. On his way off the national stage and he comes up with a euphemism worthy of a Mike Huckabee.
With a reputation for selling ruthless conservatism to traditionally Democratic voters, Walker was leading the primary race not just in Iowa but in national polling too, easily upstaging the awkward-looking Jeb Bush and Donald Trump’s ominous security guards.
But by the time Walker took the reluctant decision to suspend his campaign on Monday – just 71 days after its formal launch – the dream of this tough new breed of purple state Republicanism lay in tatters.
Walker’s campaign didn’t even last long enough for Walker to file a single federal election commission (FEC) report, the Guardian notes. His human bobblehead announcement speech was perhaps a portent that there was never enough there for Walker to go the distance.
A former staffer Tweeted a series of mistakes Walker made. Here are two:
Not training himself out of tics incl instinctively answering "yes" and "absolutely" to things, comparing lots of things to union fight.— Liz Mair (@LizMair) September 21, 2015
Not educating himself fast enough on issues outside governor's remit. Educating himself on some things by talking to the wrong people.— Liz Mair (@LizMair) September 21, 2015
Walker suffered from overconfidence, it seems. A senior Republican said of Walker’s campaign, it didn’t help that “Scott was making it up as he went along.” Trump might get away with “wingnutting” it, but Walker could not. He may not have been a competent candidate, but that wasn’t Walker’s real problem. Competence is not what the GOP base wants in 2016.
Politico gets to the heart of the matter, both for Walker’s “charisma-free” candidacy and for the rest of the GOP field:
“It’s no longer about just backing an outsider in principle; people want somebody who is completely outside the system,” says Heather Stancil, co-chair of the Madison County, Iowa Republican Committee — an area that was supposed to be a Walker electoral stronghold.
“It makes me scratch my head; the only thing I can attribute Walker’s failure to is that people do not want someone tainted by any relation to government at all,” she added. “They are so fed up they don’t trust anybody. He said he was an outsider, but he also had that taint of working in government.”
Walker has the taint. What the GOP base wants is Purity of Essence.
So, we’ll meet again, Scott Walker. Don’t know where. Don’t know when.
Blue America’s swag is back for 2016! Here’s the latest raffle for progressive candidate Lou Vince, here in California’s CA-25 district:
Dear Friend,
Before moving to Arizona, Lee Rogers, last cycle’s progressive Democratic candidate in CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley north of Los Angeles), worked with local Democratic clubs and progressive activists to find a candidate who could win the newly blue district.The locals were excited about Agua Dulce councilman Lou Vince, a former marine and ex-L.A. police officer.
If you think all former marines and ex-L.A. police officers are conservative, you haven’t met Lou Vince, a dedicated progressive, and not just on the easy issues. “The banks that were too big to fail are even bigger now,” he told us this week. “We need to re-implement the Glass-Steagall Act so that Wall Street can’t gamble with Main Street’s money. It’s not right that Wall Street caused the Great Recession, didn’t face any penalties, and is now richer than ever. We need to send a cop to Congress to keep Wall Street in line and put handcuffs on the bankers if necessary.”
This week, Blue America is trying to help Lou raise campaign funds. Bruno Mars signed a guitar for us to give away as a thank you for one randomly-selected Lou Vince contributor. The autographed Fender Squier Bullet Stratocaster is a one-of-a-kind that Bruno, a Hawaiian Jewish Puerto Rican superstar signed specifically for this giveaway. So far he has won 2 Grammy awards and has sold over 100 million singles and albums.
Unlike the Tea Party Republican incumbent Steve Knight or the conservaDem also trying to run, Lou Vince is committed to doing something of Climate Change which he calls “one of the most pressing issues of our time. I am undoubtedly the most committed to protecting and safeguarding our environment to ensure our children and grandchildren have a sustainable future. The nation needs to follow California’s lead and seriously tackle climate change on the federal level.”
In fact, if you’re strapped for cash and can’t give, just send a post card to Blue America PAC at PO Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027, and let us know that you want a chance to win the guitar too.
Here’s the lovely fellow everyone in the beltway thinks is a nice moderate who can bring the country together:
In 1996, then-Congressman John Kasich cosponsored a welfare reform bill that, for the first time ever, put a time limit on recipients’ access to food stamps. Healthy, childless adults would be able to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for no more than three months in any three-year period, unless they were employed or in a training program for at least 20 hours a week. When Congress balked at a rule that would cause an estimated 1 million people to lose food aid each month, Kasich added an exception that would allow states to seek time-limit waivers for areas with especially high unemployment.
Twenty years later, in his second term as Ohio’s governor, the GOP presidential hopeful is taking advantage of these waivers, as most governors have done. But Ohio civil rights groups and economic analysts say Kasich’s administration is using the waivers unequally: It applies for waivers in some regions of the state but refuses them in others, in a pattern that has disproportionately protected white communities and hurt minority populations.
“The Kasich administration could have addressed the racial inequity in 2016,” says Wendy Patton, a senior project director at Policy Matters Ohio, an economic policy research nonprofit, who has written extensively on the state’s recent food stamp waiver policy. “The Kasich administration chose not to. The state should broaden its request to encompass all places and regions where jobs are scarce and people are hungry.”
In 2014, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) had the option to waive time limits on food stamps for the entire state. Due to a struggling economy and high unemployment, Ohio had qualified for and accepted this statewide waiver from the US Department of Agriculture every year since 2007, including during most of Kasich’s first term as governor. But this time, Kasich rejected the waiver for the next two years in most of the state’s 88 counties. His administration did accept them for 16 counties in 2014 and for 17 counties in 2015. Most of these were rural counties with small and predominantly white populations. Urban counties and cities, most of which had high minority populations, did not get waivers.
Far be it from me to suggest that a nice moderate guy like Kasich might be someone who thinks that inner city citizens don’t deserve to get food stamps. But it would be nice if someone asked him about this in a presidential debate just to hear him explain it for us don’t you think?
How the networks are fighting over Trump — and profiting handsomely from it
by digby
I wrote about the sick, symbiotic relationship between Trump and the news networks for Salon today. An excerpt:
When a recent Rolling Stone profile of Trump was released, the press went wild with a couple of outrageous quotes, one about Fiorina’s looks and another about how attractive he finds his daughter. These are creepy, off-color comments at best and ended up accruing to Fiorina’s benefit in the CNN debate, where she deftly turned it back on him. But the article had another series of quotes the media didn’t mention which show some intriguing insights into Trump’s strategy:
“I thought I’d have spent $10 million on ads, when so far I’ve spent zero. I’m on TV so much, it’d be stupid to advertise. Besides, the shows are more effective than ads.”
He’s right, isn’t he? Ads can have an effect. But getting the chance to talk for hours at a time, uninterrupted, on all three networks is much more valuable.
He admits that you have to build a team on the ground and says he’s got “huge, phenomenal” teams staffing up the first seven states. But he adds:
“I know that costs money, but I’ve got this, believe me. Remember: The two biggest costs in a presidential run are ads and transportation. Well, I own two planes and a Sikorsky chopper, so I’d say I’m pretty well covered there, wouldn’t you?”
The article goes on to speculate just how much money Trump can really afford to spend and while it’s surely enough, the question remains if he wants to spend it. His history suggests that one of the business lessons he’s learned over the years is not to expose his own fortune to too much risk. So we’ll see if he ever actually starts writing big checks. But it’s his insight into the world of TV and how to manipulate it that’s truly interesting.
I think there is probably a lot of handwringing going on behind the scenes at the news networks over their Trump coverage. Some serious journalists undoubtedly think it’s insane to spend so much time covering his every bizarre utterance. But the people who look at the ratings obviously see something different. The first Republican debate drew 24 million viewers. The second drew 22 million.(This article from CNN Money explains that the drop off from the first is not because of less interest but because the debate was 3 hours long compared to 2.) Primary debates at this point in the 2011-2012 campaign cycle averaged 4 to 5 million viewers each. And nobody doubts that the reason people are tuning in to primary politics in such vast numbers so early in the cycle is because of one reason and one reason only: Donald Trump.
And as Michael Wolff wrote in this piece for the Hollywood Reporter, however he shakes out for the GOP, there’s simply no doubt that Trump has brought big bucks to television this summer. But it’s a mixed blessing for the network that created Republican TV:
[E]ven with such additional riches at Fox, the network suddenly finds itself in a deeply unsettled world. Trump is not one more product or reflection of the Fox News media philosophy and of its hold on the Republican party. Rather, Trump is the first Republican in the Fox age, who — in a weird sort of justice that liberal Fox haters might come to rue — threatens to break the network’s hold on the Republican party and the discipline it has imposed on it. At best, Trump negotiates with Fox on an equal footing. Arguably, he dominates it, demanding it dance to his tune.
And dance to his tune they have done. We’ve never seen Roger Ailes so pliable before in the face of a Republican candidate who defies his power. But he has a big problem he’s never had before. Wolff points out that up until now Fox has defined the GOP brand and maintained a strong hold on its identity but Trump may be breaking that dominance:
Disorientingly, Trump is as much the candidate of CNN as he is of Fox, as much a friend of CNN chief Jeff Zucker as he is of Fox’s Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, as much a golden goose for Zucker as for Ailes. Indeed, Zucker’s star rises at CNN and within its parent Time Warner along with Trump’s. It is, of course, Zucker who, while running NBC, commissioned The Apprentice and its offshoots, transforming Trump from a local New York personality to national phenomenon. (Piers Morgan, the former CNN host who regularly had Trump as one of his highest-rated guests, was a winner of Celebrity Apprentice.)
Interesting, no?
So Trump is playing Fox and CNN off of each other and getting so much free airtime in the process he has no need to run any ads. But with the ratings bonanza he’s creating, these news networks have no complaints about that. It is a very mutually beneficial arrangement.
Read the whole thing. Wolff says Trump isn’t really a political story at all but rather a political version of the Malaysian Airlines story. It’s an interesting take on this phenomenon.
